Where has all the water gone?

david39

The reason we don't spend £-millions on new reservoirs or desalination plants or fleets of shiny new snow-moving equipment shacked up in compounds all over the country is because most of the time we don't need them.

The truth is that we don't spend money on plant and equipment and facilities that are used just very occasionally. It doesn't make economic sense.

In Scandinavia they need the snow moving equipment because their climate produces heavy snowfall every winter and it sticks around for weeks - in the Middle East, they have desalination plants because they have a large population and significantly less rainfall than we do.

This country manages to struggle through 5 days of snow and ice without too many set backs and we will, no doubt, see our way through this drought other than for a few parched lawns and wilting border plants.

Would you rather suffer that once or twice every 10 years or so, or pay large increases in your local authority and/or water rates permanently?

sharpy2010

penrhyn wrote: »

Tell me you are joking?

No, why would I be. Not everyone knows everything.

pine77

deanos wrote: »

Its extremely expensive to run and would bring higher bills, the far east use it as oil is something silly like 10p a litre,but its something that may well happen if the drought continues or becomes more common

Actually most Greek Islands rely on desalination and their bills are far lower than ours..

What raises bills in the uk is pipe repair work.

alleycat`

david39 wrote: »

The reason we don't spend £-millions on new reservoirs or desalination plants or fleets of shiny new snow-moving equipment shacked up in compounds all over the country is because most of the time we don't need them.

Would you rather suffer that once or twice every 10 years or so, or pay large increases in your local authority and/or water rates permanently?

I don't live in the south or south east but you cannot continue to shovel that number of people into such a small (relative) area and not start planning for reservoirs (and / or) desalination (or equivalent).

Even the water companies are actively looking at some of the above as they know they are going to struggle going forward.

They wouldn't be doing anything to spend money (shareholders and all that) unless they knew that this was going to be a long term issue.

HappyMJ

pine77 wrote: »

Actually most Greek Islands rely on desalination and their bills are far lower than ours..

What raises bills in the uk is pipe repair work.

Their bills are lower as the greek government subsidizes the bills. The actual cost of running a desalination plant costs a lot more than the cost of water in the UK.

pine77

Athens and Salonika Water authorities are part public part private.

Most the desalination plants on the islands are private ventures.